Despite the proliferation of credit and debit cards, the use of printed checks remains popular. Unfortunately, there are abuses of paper checks committed by the account holder and there are other abuses that result in fraud and injure an innocent person or business. Technology exists to notify merchants of checks that are likely to have insufficient funds. This greatly limits a person's ability to use their own checks when they have little or no money to cover a check. But this technology does not help an innocent account holder whose checks have been fraudulently obtained by another.
One way to obtain another's checks is to steal them. Another way is to use another's identity to illegally obtain checks with the innocent person's account information imprinted on the checks. Thus, many forms of fraud begin when a person orders new checks under another's identity for a fraudulent use. This is a problem check printers and financial institutions face when processing check orders. It is no small task to detect these situations, since check printers and financial institutions process millions of check orders every year. Furthermore, no one likes to be falsely suspected of a fraudulent order. Thus, the check printer must carefully search for improper orders to prevent those who would commit fraud from obtaining checks for improper uses while not adversely impacting orders for innocent account holders.
One method of identifying questionable check orders is for a trained ordering agent, or customer service agent, to look for clues that the order is improper. Generally, the clues are details related to the check ordering process. These details are sometimes referred to as order parameters. While there are a number of ways to assess the risk or reliability in a check order, it is problematic for a check distributor to assess all of the order parameters by systematic means. Because some order parameters are more indicative of risk than others, judging the level of risk associated with the order parameters can be subjective and thus difficult to judge uniformly.
Therefore, what is needed in the art is a sophisticated system and method for reviewing paper check orders. The system should use existing information to spot potentially bad check orders for further investigation before the check orders are filled. Such a system would be even more desirable if it could process statistical information from past improper orders for improved check order processing in the future.